


an interlude

by antematter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bendemption, F/M, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antematter/pseuds/antematter
Summary: The day Kylo Ren decides to die is a hot humid summer day.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	an interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: suicidal ideation

The day Kylo Ren decides to die is a hot humid summer day. The air is thick and suffocating, and the mosquitos buzz incessantly around his ankles. He’s thought about it before of course, on days when the litany of thoughts in his head gets too much, when the emptiness of his apartment hurts in the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat.

There must have been a trigger today though, but he can’t pick it out. It wasn’t Hux knocking his coffee over onto his clinic notes, or Snoke yelling at him in the middle of the radiology department in front of all his junior staff – no that was normal. He can’t work it out. But as he parks his car at the craggy beach front, it niggles away at him.

The beach is nearly deserted as he approaches the cliff. There is a lone ice cream van parked just by the sidewalk, its faded shade-cloth flapping mournfully in the distant breeze. The proprietor is absent though, and the window drawn.

There are other nicer beaches, Kylo thinks as he begins his ascent. Beaches his parents took him to as a child, beaches he went to alone after his parents’ divorce, beaches he’d hated because the sun always burned too hot and the sand always stayed too long. He wonders what his parents are doing now.

Out of habit, he checks his phone. 5:33PM. A reminder that his case reports are due tomorrow. And three text messages from his uncle.

“Ah,” Kylo says aloud.

The wind picks up around him as he approaches the edge of the cliff. A tired old metal bar blocks his way, but he ducks under it easily. His shoes move silently on the rocks until he is perched over the edge, looking down on the sheer drop and the menacing rocks below. The waves crash.

He opens the text messages again, as if they hadn’t been burned into the back of his brain since he’d first read them.

_Ben, call me._

_Snoke’s going to lose his case, with or without your help._

_If you want to save your career and reputation, you should help us._

Kylo’s fist tightens around the phone until the protective screen cracks. He curses, reaches back and hurls the phone into the depths below. His hand is bleeding.

“Are you okay?”

He startles, takes a step back as he whirls around to see behind him. The gravel underfoot shifts and falls. He stumbles.

But there is a girl just in front of that old metal bar, and she steps forward and grasps his arm. Leads him away from the edge. Helps him sit down in the dust and the grass. “Are you okay?” she asks again. His heart is pounding in his ears.

She hasn’t let go of his arm. Her thumb is rubbing in small circles over his bicep, and she looks at him like she knows him. Like she’s seen him once before, in a dream.

“My name’s Rey,” she says slowly. “What’s yours?”

“Ben,” he says thickly. “I’m Ben.”

**

It takes him a while before he can really speak – or at least in sentences that are longer than one word, but Rey just sits there with him. She’s moved on to holding his hand now, thumb still idly brushing his skin. They could almost be a couple watching the sunset.

“I assisted my boss on a surgical case,” he blurts out. “It went wrong. He didn’t know what he was doing – it was experimental and the patient died.”

Her hand tightens in his.

“He told me it was my fault,” he continues. “That if I’d been better, identified the point of bleeding better, did a better anastomosis – the patient wouldn’t have died.” A breath. “It took me a long time to realise that it wasn’t true, but now he’s in trouble, and he’s going to ruin my career all the same. I followed him to this city. I left my family – my mother is the head of the cardiology department two states over and she _abhors_ his practices, so we had a huge falling out and my dad had a cardiac arrest when I left – Takotsubo’s cardiomyopathy, Rey, he literally died of a broken heart – there’s poetry in that if it weren’t all my fucking fault.”

He wipes his face and is startled to realise that his cheeks are wet. “I gave up my whole life for this job, for this career. Without it, I’m nothing.”

“But not to me.” Her voice is hoarse from listening, and it would be laughable really, when they’re two strangers on an edge of a cliff overlooking the black, black ocean, but there’s something about the way the sunset falls on her earnest freckled face, and the light reflects off the three buns on the top of her head that tugs at his heart. Something in this evening that makes him feel it could almost be true.

“You don’t know me,” Kylo says instead.

“But I do.”

***

The dusk is well and truly falling by the time Ben notices. Somewhere far underwater, his uncle is probably calling him. Or maybe the on-call medical registrar – work is probably the only reason he would ever be registered as a missing person.

But Rey is still here, her face half-lit by the setting sun, as she talks on and on. Her accent is British and her voice is soothing as she tells him about her foster mother Maz who’d died ten years ago to the day.

“Maz loved the spot, Ben,” she says. “She used to take me here all the time. I’d never seen the ocean before. And after she died, I didn’t again for a long time.”

Ben’s found his voice. “It’s a beautiful place,” he says, and means it. The light is golden on the cliffs, and Rey’s hand in his is the most solid thing he’s held in days. “Where did you go after Maz died?”

“Oh,” her voice is soft now, “here and there. My next foster dad was not … nice. I ran away. But there’s only so far you can run in a desert.” She clears her throat. “Anyway. When I could, I came back here. I felt most alive here.”

It’s ironic, Ben thinks, because this is the place where he most wanted to be dead.

“Ben,” Rey says seriously, as though she can read his thoughts. In this half-light she could be a million miles away. “Don’t do it.”

“What?”

She turns towards him, takes both of his hands. “You deserve so much more than this.”

A half sob chokes in his throat, because he’s never been enough – not for his mother who expected more from him, not for his father who wanted a son who wasn’t a coward, who would stay, and certainly not for Snoke who wanted him to work harder, longer, bleed more of him into his job. To be the best. How is it possible, he thinks, for one man to be so broken?

But Rey’s hands in his, gently pressing into his palms, pushing him back together again. He feels like he’s known her across all the galaxies, chased her through all the stars, fought wars to get back to a happy ending. Or maybe she’s found him.

Rey leans in towards him but leaves the tiniest space. He can feel her breath on his lips, just waiting. “Ben Solo,” she sighs, and it feels like a promise. He pauses. There is a second where he could pull away – pull away, go back to his mundanity, or plunge into the depths below.

But not tonight.

He kisses her and it feels like a choice. Tonight, Ben Solo gets to live.

**Author's Note:**

> In some universe there's a version of Ben Solo and Rey that get to have a happy ending; I don't make the rules.


End file.
